


And Yet, I Know This Handwriting

by suchanadorer



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dreamwalking, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 09:52:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1978422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchanadorer/pseuds/suchanadorer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ethylene glycol is poisonous to humans and other animals, and should be handled carefully and disposed of properly. Its sweet taste can lead to accidental ingestion or allow its deliberate use as a murder weapon.</p>
<p>Something can be sweet, but also dangerous, even if it keeps you from freezing to death.</p>
<p>Sam is Lucifer's antifreeze. He keeps him from freezing up completely and even helps him thaw, but Lucifer can see the future and knows what's in store for him after Sam says yes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Yet, I Know This Handwriting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OrangeZest100](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrangeZest100/gifts).



> For orangezest100 as part of the FYSL HTH 2014 Exchange, based on the prompt "Antifreeze."

_I want you to say yes to me._

Lucifer walks slowly around the bed, looking down at Sam where he sleeps. Even if his dreams, he sleeps.

The setting is the same as always, a generic room in a no-name motel with a flickering neon sign and kitschy decorating. Rain hammers on the window, fat drops hidden behind crooked blinds that let in the orange light from outside to fall on the floor and the bed in stripes.

Dean is not there because Dean is never there when Lucifer visits Sam’s dreams. Lucifer wonders if it’s because he’s there, or if Sam dreams of being on his own.

Either way, it lets Lucifer say those things that he will never tell Sam when he’s awake. He wants to be kind. For the first time in such a long time, he wants to be kind.

_You bring out what's left inside of me that could still be called an angel, Sam. You make me want to protect and provide, nourish and shelter and love like no other human on this planet. And there are a lot of humans on this planet. But there is only one of you._

Lucifer runs a hand over his face and sighs. His very nature is destruction; he cleaved Heaven in two with his desire to serve only God, and now his path is one of ruin and rebirth.

_It hurts, to want to do these things, to strain against the nature I have spent my entire lifetime, the universe's lifetime, cultivating down there in that cage. I have honed my edges until they are so sharp as to be invisible._

But then there's you, warm and alive, melting the ice that I would use to cut reality to ribbons.

It’s not so much that Lucifer needs to be inside Sam as he needs Sam to surround him. He is frozen, and he didn’t think that it could get any worse, but Earth is colder than he remembers, and Nick is threadbare.

And yet, he does not want to. He knows what he is, what he has been made into by time and cruelty and the absence of love, and he does not want to pour all that into his vessel. They will change each other, and Lucifer wants to preserve Sam as he is now, full of fire and light and love. He is reminded of himself, the self that he was so long ago.

The bed sags when Lucifer sits on the edge. Sam’s bed in whatever anonymous demon-infested town the Winchesters have found themselves in will show no sign of his visit, but even here in Sam’s dream the window is steaming up. It will frost over, given time. It’s new, that he has this effect in the dreams. He knows what it is.

_I am running out of time._

Lucifer flexes his hands, swears he can hear himself creaking in Nick’s joints. Like ice sheets pushing against each other, thawing and cracking and refreezing into abstract figures.

Antifreeze flows through an engine to keep it moving smoothly in cold weather. Lucifer _is_ cold weather. He is snow and ice, the wind that cuts through your best coat and makes your eyes sting with tears. He is the storm that sweeps cars from the road, topples trees, and buries civilizations in thick, white blankets. He wipes clean the slate of the world in preparation for renewal, when all the filth will be washed away.

Sam is warmth personified. He is sunshine on the hood of the Impala, a soft blanket in front of a fireplace. He is down comforters and Sunday mornings on the edge of spring when the light has warmed the room so much that you can pretend not to see the glint of icicles outside the window.

Sam is Lucifer’s antifreeze. He will keep Lucifer balanced and fluid, allow him to use his power to the fullest extent. He will fill in all the cracks of Lucifer’s weathered Grace and heal him, just as he will fill in all the empty spaces inside Sam’s soul.

Sam was made to complete him, and he longs for the day when Sam will come to that realization.

He thinks he sees it, sometimes, when Sam looks at him. Not that they’ve been face to face often, but when they have, he sees it in Sam’s eyes: the knowledge that they are the same, that they are moving towards a shared destiny.

When he looks at Sam, he does it with love. All the love he had for his Father, his brother, his family, all transferred to Sam Winchester.

When Sam looks at him, he does so with fear. All the fear that he had for his father, that he still has for his brother, and even his mother and Jess.

The chemicals in antifreeze are also poisonous. Not to an angel; to an angel, few things are. But it’s insidious to humans and animals. It tastes sweet, but it will kill them.

But Sam is his antifreeze. Sam will keep him warm, right up until he destroys him.

_I will enjoy it while I have it. Maybe, just maybe, I can show you how good we could be together._

The buzz of the alarm clock cuts through the air in the room like a knife, reality invading the perfect bubble where Sam and Lucifer find themselves. At once it is daylight in the room and Sam is stirring. He blinks once, twice, and Lucifer stays just long enough for Sam to see him, before the dream dissolves around them.

There is no kindness in Sam’s expression, only the hot burn of vengeance for those that he has lost and those that Lucifer would take away. Endless unnamed masses that Sam would do everything to save, because that is Sam’s way.

It hurts, the way that Sam looks at him, and yet Lucifer would not have his gaze settle anywhere else.

_And now it starts._


End file.
